Light Up
by Kari Kurofai
Summary: <html><head></head>Sometimes it's okay to just stop for awhile. Dean/Castiel, Gabriel/Sam, Adam. A fic celebrating season 7.</html>


**Light Up**

In celebration of season seven. A little fluff with each of my favorite boys.

_Light up, light up_

_As if you have a choice_

_Even if you cannot hear my voice_

_I'll be right beside you dear._

They park the Impala on side of a boardwalk overlooking a long soft stretch of sand down to the ocean. It's mid fall, and the only people in sight are a couple walking along the shore quite a ways down. Sam sits up on the passenger side of the car and raises an eyebrow at Dean in confusion. They're still hours away from the next case. Dean simply grins in return, opening his door to stand and stretch outside, sucking in a lungful of salty sea air. Sam shrugs and follows suit without question.

Sometimes, it's okay to just stop. Stop hunting, stop fighting, stop worrying. Everything.

The younger Winchester leans against the Impala for a moment, watching Dean stare out at the sea before he ducks back into the car, leaning over his seat and into the back. He smiles then, a wash of affection running through him when he sees Adam, the youngest and newest addition to their family, sound asleep. He's sprawled out across the back on his stomach like the child he still is, his mouth hanging open mid-snore and a little trail of drool under his cheek. Sam laughs softly as he reaches to shake him awake.

Adam jumps, and Sam doesn't blame him. After all the time he spent in the cage it's only natural, time Sam feels guilty for when he thinks of the months he spent free and safe while his baby brother rotted in Hell. Adam blinks and rubs his eyes before glancing out the window. His face lights up immediately when he catches sight of the ocean, and Sam can't help but smile too.

"Have you never seen it?" Sam asks, feeling a tinge of sadness when Adam shakes his head. "Come on then."

Outside, Dean has taken off his shoes and is toeing at the sand experimentally. When he notices Sam and Adam have finally gotten their act together he kicks some at them, laughing when Adam frowns and Sam makes one of his many bitch faces. His brothers have more in common than they know, and Dean smirks at them with that thought.

Holding out his arms Dean lets out a shout to the open, cloudless sky, wordless and happy as Sam hasn't heard it in years. "Hey Cass! Get your angel butt down here!"

Adam snorts, sitting down on the edge of the boardwalk to take off his shoes, rolling up his jeans without a care in the world while Dean continues to yell at the sky as if expecting the angel to return his calls through it. Castiel is always late when things aren't urgent or life threatening, Adam knows this by now. But that doesn't mean Dean does. The youngest of the brothers rests his elbows on his knees and watches Dean stamp angrily about in the sand before casting his own gaze towards the sky.

"_Sometimes it's okay to have fun too, you know_," he thinks.

Before Dean can scream some more blasphemy at the sky, Castiel appears almost right on top of Adam, almost tripping over him in the process. Dean whoops in victory as if Castiel's appearance is his doing, which Adam supposes in part it is. He smiles at Castiel, jerking his head towards Dean in the same motion.

Castiel is stubborn, and Adam knows that he and Dean have been fighting off and on for years about some stupid thing or another, but this isn't the time for that. The youngest Winchester laughs to himself when Dean bounds over to them, grabbing the collar of Castiel's trench coat and dragging him to the sand with a muttered, "About time," accompanied by a few other annoyed remarks. But Castiel doesn't seem to notice them, and Adam knows Dean doesn't miss the hesitant smile that graces the angel's face, just visible in the light of the sun that's just barely touching the horizon.

Sam nudges at his shoulder then, and Adam looks up at him. The taller man has a dizzyingly bright smile on, and he tilts his head in Dean and Castiel's direction. Adam chuckles, "Cass may be a stick in the mud about listening to Dean when they're fighting, but if I act innocent and adorable of course he'll come down."

A snort of amusement escapes Sam at this, "Adorable? Innocent? I think you mean fiendish and meddling. Cass just hasn't developed a filter for your bullshit yet like he has ours. And you're the baby so he likes to spoil you. If you asked him for a million dollars he'd give it to you."

"You think?" Adam grins, before frowning in realization, "Hey! I'm not the baby! I'm twenty!"

"And I'm twenty-nine," Sam huffs, "Thus, you are the baby."

"Both you babies get your asses over here!" Dean hollers then from farther down the beach. They look up in unison to see the hunter in the process of trying to take of Castiel's trench coat and his own shirt at the same time. Adam blanches.

"Meddling in their epic love affair or not, what the hell."

"You mean epic love denial," Sam corrects before adding, "And amen to that. What the . . ."

Dean waves at them, seemingly oblivious to what he's in the middle of doing. Castiel's coat is on the ground now, his tie in Dean's hand as the hunter works on undoing it. Adam makes a mock gagging noise and yells, "Get a room!" while Sam laughs so hard he has to lean over and grab his knees to keep from falling over.

The eldest Winchester makes a flustered noise before screeching, "We're just going swimming!" back, to which Sam returns, "Where? Denial!" and then it's Adam's turn to struggle for breath through his peels of laughter. Castiel just gives them all his usual, "Humans are odd," stare.

"Speaking off denial," Adam says as he starts shedding his own shirt, knowing someone has to go swimming with the two idiots or Dean won't get within ten feet of Castiel for at least a week, all the while spouting his usual, "I am so heterosexual," rants. "Why don't we call your favorite angel?"

Sam looks down at him with a glare that could kill, "He is not my favorite anything."

"Call him," Adam orders, not phased in the least by the look. Because, really, he's surrounded by morons in denial every day of the week. And he's damn good about brining up that fact as often as possible.

Sam throws his hands in the air with an exasperated groan. Kicks the boardwalk angrily and opens his mouth, the "G-" barely escaping him before there's a crack and he finds himself with an armful of archangel and a shower of skittles raining down on him.

_Appropriate_, Adam decides, raising a hand to catch a yellow one and pop it in his mouth. Sam is somewhere between sputtering out a insult and blushing furiously as Gabriel hangs from his neck, standing on his tiptoes to even have enough height to do so properly. Adam eats another skittle and says, "We should have a big picnic," to them, just to break the tension, mostly because Sam looks like he's about to pass out.

"You bet, little Winchester," Gabriel grins.

There are few perfect days like this in their lives, so it's pretty hard to take them for granted when the come along. Which is exactly why they don't. Gabriel, after much poking and prodding, manages to convince Sam to strip down to his boxers and go swimming with the rest of them. More convincing than is natural, in Adam's opinion. Sam's scars are surprisingly small compared to the rest of their rag tag family, and Adam envies the strange purity his body still seems to hold, despite whatever Sam may think. His shoulder does not bear the angelic handprint Dean's does. His chest is not etched with a careful now scar white banishing engraving like Castiel's. Sam's stomach is lightly dotted with old wounds, but none like the large splash of scar tissue that almost consumes Gabriel's. And unlike Adam, Sam's scars from Hell are almost unnoticeable, just like how little time his body spent there, whereas Adam can trace out every line, every old cut and puncture across his entire frame, reminders of things even angels could not fully heal.

But that's what makes them _them_. The little scars, and the big ones. It's one of the many things that reminds them who they are, what they've been through, and why they're together. Adam knows they all need each other more than any one of them would care to admit. And he's okay with that.

It turns out that Gabriel is the best swimmer of all of them, and it doesn't take long before they're all pretty sick of getting their feet pulled out from under them and face-planting into the waves. All of them except Castiel that is, as the younger angel is as immoveable as a statue, even when Gabriel tries to bodily tackle him down into the water. Adam notices, however, that while the archangel is busy bouncing beach balls off of Sam's head, Dean does manage to get the jump on Castiel. A literal jump as he seriously hurls himself out off the water like a great white during Shark Week and crashes down right on top of the unsuspecting angel sending them both underwater.

Adam has trouble keeping himself above water in the wake of the wave that creates, and he watches with amusement that Castiel sputters in surprise when he surfaces, water streaming from his now soaked hair and his eyes blinking rapidly as he tries to regain his senses. Dean appears not far away and laughs uproariously, which in turn makes Castiel glare at him and raise a hand to dunk him underwater and hold him there until Dean apologizes. How he knows it's an apology though, Adam will never know. All he sees is a lot of bubbles.

Eventually Gabriel manages to rope them all into a game of beach ball, during which Dean has to demonstrate multiple times what the required amount of strength is for hitting the ball to Castiel, and Adam watches just as many beach balls sail off into the horizon, never to be seen again. He imagines them landing on cruise ships and fishing boats far out at sea, exploding upon impact and scaring the shit out of the people on board, and he laughs to himself.

When everyone is sufficiently bored of swimming/tired of losing beach balls Cass hits/pissed of at Gabriel for dunking them/pissed off at Gabriel for making it look like there was a shark/pissed off at Gabriel in general, they spread out on a large blanket the archangel conjures on the sand.

They feast on anything they desire, Gabriel angel mojo-ing it into existence upon request. And every request he fulfils without complaint. Except Sam's. When Sam ordered a salad the Trickster gave him chocolate covered strawberries, amongst many other such treats. But Adam only notices the strawberries because those are when Gabriel favors when he sprawls out on top of Sam, drawing on the hunter's skin with the chocolate covered fruits. Frankly, Adam is too punch drunk off of the bubbly pink drink Gabriel had presented them all with to care, or to look away for that matter. He only turns his gaze when Sam lets out a light laugh when Gabriel begins to go over the chocolate designs on his chest with his tongue.

_Not his favorite angel, my ass_, Adam snorts, rolling over onto his side away from them, unable to handle that much sap in one range of vision.

On the other side of the blanket however, Dean has dozed off. The light of the setting sun is not enough to wake him, and Adam raises his eyes to see Castiel sitting on the hunter's other side, staring down at the way it leaves a golden glow on his skin. Wordlessly, the angel reaches for his trench coat that had been discarded hours earlier and lays it over the sleeping human. He pauses then before bringing a hand to the side of Dean's face, the back of his fingers brushing the light stubble there in an almost absentminded way. Adam can't help but smile at the hesitant look that flits through Castiel's eyes then.

"He'll come around eventually," he whispers, nodding when Castiel blinks and looks up at him. "Eventually."

Adam goes back to laying on his back then, his eyes closing to the slow bleed of reds and golds across the sky as the sun sinks into the waves. Sometimes, it's okay to spend a day like this. Without war, without worries, without fear. It's still there, all of it, lingering somewhere in the back of all their minds, but today it's been pushed aside for better things, more important things.

And that's okay.


End file.
